The Final Four of College Football

Dear BCS:

So long BCS...

Fans have been clamoring for it forever and today the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee approved of college footballs first playoff ever. This model was approved by the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s head honcho last week. It’s funny to listen to these empty money grubbing suits talk about how great this is for college football when in the recent past these same people were quoted for years as saying a playoff would ruin college football. But to their credit, they got the ball rolling.

When:

Not soon enough!

The new playoff format will start on December 31st of 2014. One game will be on the 31st(much to the chagrin of every party planning woman associated with any red-blooded American male in America) and another on the 1st of January. The title game will be played the following Monday night as long as it’s at least six days after January 1st. #2 will play #3 and #1 will play #4. The contract will be for 12 years. I guarantee the number of teams will increase from here. This is certainly not an end all be all situation.

Why not bump this up to 2013? Why wait 2 years? UGH!

Where:

The semi-final games will be rotated among 6 bowl games that already exist. Those bowl games have not been selected yet, however one can guess that they will be The Rose Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, The Orange Bowl, The Fiesta Bowl, The Cotton Bowl and perhaps the new bowl game that will be played by the SEC and Big 12 winners. The title game will be bid out to the highest bidder. I’m sure there will be no under the table deals going on for these rights…

Why:

Because the powers that be caved under massive pressure from college football fans nation wide. They finally listened! Actually a better way to put it would be that they finally figured out they could make a lot more money with a playoff. Everything from merchandising to local booms in the economy to TV rights. Speaking of TV rights, one of the reasons for the change had to be the plummeting TV ratings of the BCS bowl games as well as the rest of the bowl games. Fans were revolting…tuning out. Meanwhile the NFL has been busy basically printing money due to massive playoff TV ratings. It’s been estimated that TV rights alone could bring in 6 billion in revenue over the life of the new college football playoff contract. Pretty much the same players will be padding their pockets, but instead of a wad of twenties it will be a wad of hundreds.

How:

A selection committee will rank the teams, based on factors like strength of schedule, prettiest cheerleaders and best mascot. No details on how the committee will be selected. Perhaps a committee to select a committee will be needed. This too leaves a bit to be desired. The selection committee method works for college basketball but again who will be on the committee and what will all the factors be? Will they once and for all get rid of the fake computer rankings? This process needs to be transparent. This does not eliminate controversy as now instead of the #3 team getting left out the #5 team will be left out…but we will take it. We will take it like a detoxing hobo taking a vodka soaked Baconator…more please-(British accent). With all joking aside hat will the committee take into consideration? They will look at head to head match ups, win loss record, strength of schedule and conference champions. Last years Big Ten Championship game was relatively meaningless. It was one of the better games of the year if you watched it, but at the end of the day, it was totally meaningless. The winner got to go to the Rose Bowl and the loser didn’t even get to go to a BCS bowl game. With this playoff the winner could very well be in contention for a shot at a National Title. Gotta love it.

More details to come…it will be interesting to see how this effects the polls the bowls and the regular season.

I’ve been a fan of college football my whole life, but there was always something missing…a postseason that made sense. It started with the “nothing” approach with just simply ranked teams that rarely ever matched up #1 vs #2. Then came the BCS which was exciting at first but proved to be a major league head scratcher. For years the BCS was surrounded with controversy, capped off last year of course with LSU playing Alabama in the title game. Alabama didn’t even win their on division, let alone their own conference, yet there they were in the title game. Oh…and they won it too. It sort of took a wrecking ball to the idiotic notion that the BCS protected the sanctity of the regular season and guaranteed that every game counted. We all knew that was ridiculous.

So this is a great first step forward. What is missing? What could they do better with? Time will tell. I for one would love to see the semifinal rounds held at the home field of the higher seed. I’d hate for OSU to have the #1 seed and have to play #4 USC in The Rose Bowl. That wouldn’t make any sense at all. Hopefully the “committee” takes that into consideration.

Playoffs? Yeah…we are talking about playoffs!

Yes Jim, playoffs.

Comments

  1. How? You are probably right on, wouldn’t be surprised if the committee is made up of a bunch of guys that haven’t watched a football game in 40 years from outside a box a million miles from the field.

    My guess is this is where the $$$ really hit the road. My guess is that this is really where “who travels” better will come into play as always.

    Fortunately for me, the Buckeyes travel really well.

  2. In my mind they are still leaving money on the table….

  3. There might be some money left on the table, but if you are the SEC/B10/PAC/B12, 2 of them might really be losing money (on a discounted risk adjusted basis). Last year there were 5 big money bowls (4 venues), now there will only be 3, and if you are locked out of the first 2, you get no $$ from #3.

    Now you have no AQs, so you have a real threat of having a BSU et al with a perfect record (probably not going to happen again) looking to displace a 11-1 OSU in one of 2 games. We can argue all day about SOS, but the committee might have other criteria, i.e, they might consider “fairness” more important than legacy.

    Either way, before, the B10 Commissioners had a virtual guarantee for a $17M game, now they might not.

  4. Actually there will be 7 big money games. The semis are rotating through 6 existing bowls & the four that are in off-years will still be hosting major match ups. Then there’s the title game.

    I think fans will be pleasantly surprised with how the committee operates. That doesn’t mean everyone will agree with their decisions all the time, but I think we’ll see a transparency & accountability that the BCS formula couldn’t offer.

  5. Anything is better than allowing the polls to decide playoff spots. ESPN can manipulate polls; it will be harder for them to manipulate the committee, and harder for any committee to defensively justify obvious bias.

    \Not that it won’t happen, of course
    \\It will just be harder

  6. Not sure what the benefit of what being the #1 seed is….

    I think this is a work in progress…..still ruled by money and not logic.

    Urban Meyer has coached Ohio State to exactly zero wins and people are already comparing him to Tressels success. Meyer will have a Big Ten Title to contend with AND a playoff system. Much harder for him to be successful compared to Tressel.

  7. I guess the benefit of being #1 is that you get to play #4 first. Last year, that would have meant that LSU got to play Oregon (most likely), a team they had already beat by a pretty decent margin. It’s not a huge benefit most years, but it’s something.

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